


What I Want

by ReallyEleanor



Series: What She Wanted [1]
Category: The Oregon Files - Clive Cussler
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-14 00:03:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReallyEleanor/pseuds/ReallyEleanor
Summary: Juan Cabrillo and an original character work together to decipher an ancient manuscript--and a few other things.  This is version number one.





	What I Want

**Central Asia, four years ago**  
An explosion ripped apart the house in a poor area of Kandahar, taking half of the neighborhood with it. The house was, in fact, an IED factory; many American and coalition forces were victims of its products. Only a few people were killed, including the Taliban master bomb maker. One of the dead was a woman identified as Nur Asim, born in Jalalabad. Her death notice was published in a Kabul newspaper several days later. The stories were picked up by _Al Jazeera_ and broadcast internationally.

A small Afghan woman in a burka stood at the Torkham checkpoint waiting to cross into Pakistan. She handed the border guard her passport and uncovered part of her face. As the man compared the two, he gave a moue of distaste. The woman in the passport picture wasn’t pretty, but now the flesh and blood woman was scarred and ugly. Her little backpack was searched; nothing illegal was found. The guard contemplated taking her money, but there wasn’t enough to bother. He waved her through the gate and she repeated the process on the other side. 

When the woman reached Islamabad, she went to the mosque at prayer time. In the women’s area, she removed her shoes and performed her ablutions. Her face received special attention; she scrubbed it well. She joined her sisters in prayer. She never came out.

The Pakistani Muslim woman in a dark-colored firaq partug and chador exited the mosque and walked to the market. She was short, but any other details of her appearance were covered. She bought a large backpack, a cheap cell phone, and things a woman would need. She went into an open-fronted store selling women’s clothing. She never came out.

The Pakistani Hindu woman with dusky skin and long, black hair in a bright salwar kameez and dupatta walked into the bank. A few minutes later, she exited the bank with a full backpack. She got into the car the bank manager called for her. It dropped her off at a hotel near the airport. The concierge accepted several deliveries for her room. When the maid came in to clean two days later, after her reservation had run out, she wasn’t in the room. She never came out. 

The small, pale English woman with mousy brown hair and blue eyes arrived at the airport in good time for her flight. The security agent noticed how young and carefree she looked in her passport photo. Now, she had the same unlined face, but there was gray in her hair and a lifetime of worries in her eyes. She wore conservative, inexpensive clothing and carried only a small backpack. She boarded the flight for London. 

It was over.

0----------------------------0  
**Norfolk Virginia, present day**  
Eleanor Harris opened her back door ready to walk out to her garden. Before she could take a step, the doorbell for the front door rang. She wasn’t expecting a package, a visitor, or a political candidate. This probably meant someone from work. With a sigh, Eleanor closed and locked the back door, stepped out of her clogs and into her sandals, and walked to the front door. 

“Doctor Harris?” The two Navy SPs at her door looked to be every bit of eighteen years old. She was sure they got younger every year. Too bad she didn't. 

“I’m Doctor Harris. How may I help you?”

“Captain Harrington would like you to come out to Little Creek. There’s a translation problem. Are you available?”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“No, Ma’am. He did say it was important. And we could drive you if you wanted.”

She laughed. “I’m glad you put it that way. I was hoping you weren’t here to arrest me.” When the Captain sent young SPs, he wanted Eleanor to know it was an optional assignment. If the Senior Chief was at the door, it was an emergency. She thought for a moment. It was June, school was out, and she had nothing pressing to do. Her niece and nephew were with their parents. “Let me get my keys. I’ll drive myself. I know the way.”

Eleanor did know the way to Little Creek. She’d been there a few times to help a friend with translation issues. She spoke and read many of the languages they worked with on their missions. Her friend on teams must really need something, or he wouldn’t have asked. He knew she hated to come out to Little Creek, but she did owe her friend a favor and she always paid her debts.  
0---------------------------0  
The conference room was cool; she was glad she had her cardigan. She sat in a chair at the conference table, composed, with her hands in her lap and briefcase on the floor beside her. There were two women sitting across the table and talking quietly. Four sailors were working on the electronic equipment and sound system. 

Captain Harrington came in first. The sailors saluted, and he motioned for them to leave. Eleanor watched a group of men walk through the door behind him. Seven of them, all with the look of experienced operatives. Intelligence agents: no uniforms. She always recognized them, something in their eyes and the way they scanned their surroundings. Almost all of them were at least six feet tall and well built. Under their clothes, they’d have six-pack abs and defined muscles. 

She sighed. One of those jobs. ‘National Security. Classified.’ Another translation gig with little reward. She really should start charging for her services. Walk in, hand someone a card with her fee schedule. Cash upfront or walk out. These guys looked like they could afford it.

She judged that there were two leaders, walking ahead of the others, both talking to Captain Harrington. Both were fair-haired, one gray and one blonde. They looked around the room for their translator and looked right over her. The two other women in the room, the CIA contacts, drew the men’s attention. Of course. Those women were taller, made up and hair styled, and better dressed in business clothing. Eleanor was short and thin and had answered her door prepared to work in her garden, not her office. She was wearing a department store t-shirt, shorts, and a light cardigan. 

“I was surprised when you called,” Captain Harrington was saying. “How did you know the professor had worked with us?”

“One of my…contacts,” the gray-haired man said. Most people wouldn’t have caught the hesitation, but she had. “We thought we’d have to meet him at Old Dominion. It’s better we’re here as it’s more secure.”

The blonde man was looking at the two CIA contacts, trying to guess which one of them was ‘the professor.’ Neither were men, so the blonde man was sure they would have to wait. He addressed the Captain, “We’d like to get started. Is the professor here? This is a little time-sensitive and it will probably take him several days to decipher the document. A key is coming over that will help, but maybe he can get started.”

“He?” Captain Harrington asked. “The professor--the translator?” They nodded and he continued. “The professor is a ‘she.’” The Captain looked at the two women from the CIA then turned another ninety degrees and pointed—at Eleanor. “You’re looking for Dr. Harris. Dr. Eleanor Harris.”

Everyone looked at her now. Eleanor did her best to keep her expression neutral; no one ever expected her to be the language expert. She stood up and greeted the men individually as they filed in and took seats.

The tall gray-haired man was “Kurt Austin, Special Projects Director at NUMA” with “My transportation specialist, Joe Zavala.” Joe was shorter, with dark hair and eyes and the look of a ‘player.’ Both were a few years older than her. She’d heard of NUMA and both Austin and Zavala. ‘Special Projects’ were things like finding Christopher Columbus, and ‘Director’ meant fixer.

The tall blonde was “Juan Cabrillo.” No title; expensively dressed, mid-40s. He was accompanied by “Max Hanley, Mark Murphy, and Eric Stone, my engineers.” An older man, probably in his 60s; a tall, lean man with dark hair about her age dressed in Goth t-shirt and cargo pants; and another man with light brown hair and glasses about her age wearing a buttoned-down shirt and khakis. Cabrillo, their leader, looked like an experienced field operative of some kind but was now in the private sector. Public sector employees didn't wear designer jackets. She’d bet the mortgage on it. Two of his engineers looked like former military; the third, the Goth guy, wasn’t either type. So a private security company, most likely.

The final man was a surprise. She knew him! Would he recognize her? She hoped not. It was 21 years since they had met. “Lang Overholt.” Lang was tall and thin, white hair, brown eyes, and in good shape for his age. He must be over 70 now. Eleanor also knew he was with the CIA. Very highly placed, too.

“Nice to meet you, gentlemen,” Eleanor replied. She sat back down. 

Juan Cabrillo turned to Lang Overholt and asked, “Non-disclosure agreement?”

Eleanor answered, “Already done.” She looked at the women from the CIA. They nodded in acknowledgment. “May I see the documents, please?” 

Kurt Austin looked at the small, thin woman in front of him. Brown hair in a bun, blue eyes behind glasses, no makeup, casual clothes. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties, but he suspected she would be in her thirties from the amount of gray in her hair. She did NOT look like a professor—maybe a Kindergarten teacher or a secretary. THIS was the linguistics expert Hiram Yeager’s computer—Max—had recommended? He set his briefcase on the table and pulled out a thick folder. It looked like there were forty or fifty photocopied pages.

“We believe this document is in several languages, all from central Asia, around Afghanistan. It’s information about an invention, probably a mechanical device, copied and translated from an older text.” He handed it to her, and she opened it. 

Eleanor fanned through the pages and scanned it quickly. “You’ve been able to read some of the words, but it’s written in code and you can’t figure it out. I assume you’ve run it through a translation algorithm.” She looked at Austin over her glasses and he nodded. “And the NSA was no help?” They had supercomputers and code experts, after all. It would get her out of working on this if they used the NSA instead.

Juan Cabrillo looked at Lang Overholt, then at her and said, “The NSA didn’t have the resources to deal with it right now. This is time-sensitive. Urgent.” 

The look between the two men told Eleanor there was more to this than ‘lack of resources right now time-sensitive.’ She’d heard chatter about a leak at the NSA. They must be worried someone would compromise the information.

Austin continued, “There’s a key that might help; it’s on the way, but it’s not here yet. It’ll be here soon. The guy bringing it said it helps with deciphering the word order and double meanings. Anyone can translate the words, but without the key, it doesn’t make sense. Do you think you’ll be able to figure it out?” If she couldn’t help them, they were screwed. They’d need this within ten days to stop the rogue operator, and that didn’t leave them time to find another translator.

Eleanor had kept her face carefully neutral. Not this again! Just when you think you’re finished with something, it popped back up like a jack-in-the-box. A scary clown jack-in-the-box. With a slasher knife and a hockey mask. As much as she’d like to, she didn’t roll her eyes.

She continued to look at the folder. “Yes. I’m sure I can translate—decode—this. At least, I can tell you what it says,” she said, then looked up and around the room. “You said ‘mechanical device.’” Austin nodded. “I can tell you what it says, but I can’t tell you what it means. I’m not an engineer.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Max Hanley joked. 

Eleanor shot him that ‘disapproving teacher’ look over her glasses. Then she retorted in a sweet but flat voice, “Yes. Not everyone can be a linguistics expert.” Why was there always a class clown? She hated class clowns. There were several snickers around the table. Fortunately, one of those laughing was Hanley. She reached down into her briefcase, pulled out a pad and several of her favorite mechanical pencils and got to work. 

She’d written about five sentences, not paying attention to her audience, when Juan Cabrillo asked, “You’re not waiting for the key?” He’d been told the key MIGHT make the document understandable, but even that was no guarantee. What the hell was she doing?

Eleanor looked up. Juan saw a brief flash of something before her neutral expression settled back into place. “No. I don’t need the key.” In a much more interested tone of voice, she asked, “Do you have the original document? The one this translated?” She’d love to actually see one, rather than the translated and encoded material she had worked with.

Juan wasn’t convinced. “We were told even having the key wasn’t a guarantee this could be translated so we could understand it.” He looked at her, but she continued her neutral expression. She just kept looking at him with her even stare until he admitted. “ No, we don’t have the original. We believe it was stolen and possibly destroyed.”

She sighed imperceptibly. “I’ve worked with something like this before. I don’t need the key.” She went back to her work, then looked up again. “You don’t need to stay. All you’d be doing is watching me work, and this will take a while.”

Some discussion washed over her as she wrote. All that fully registered was, “Murph, Stoney, why don’t you stay here and see what you can make of it?” She was sure the discussion outside the room would be along the lines of ‘What the fuck is she playing at?’ They doubted her intelligence and her ability, that much was clear. 

When everyone else had gone, Eleanor looked up at Mark Murphy and Eric Stone. “What did you two do to deserve babysitting duty?” She almost smiled at them.

“I’m the primary person that will turn this from words to a working model. Mechanical engineering background. Eric and I work closely on almost everything. Max and Joe are the other engineers. I used to be a weapons designer,” he stopped at the look on her face. “No, this isn’t a weapon. We’re sure. More like a key to a lock. You don’t want to work with weapons?” The last thing they needed was some peacenik, anti-gun crusader who would sabotage their work. 

“Mr. Murphy, I have a concealed carry permit. No, not anti-gun.” She sighed. “I’m just tired of violence.” She looked away and went back to work.

“It’s Dr. Murphy, by the way.” Mark corrected her with a smile. He was proud of his Ph.D. at age 20. From MIT. Eleanor nodded—earning a doctorate was important and she knew that.

As she finished pages, she handed them to Mark or Eric and kept going. Eric looked at the page she’d handed him: neat handwriting; annotations on the photocopy, cross-referenced to notes on her translation. And the translation, in both word for word and modern interpretation, made sense.

After the sixth page was handed over, Mark put down his pen and looked at Eleanor. “Okay, I’ve gotta ask. You’re just burning through this. We were told this probably couldn’t be decoded without the NSA’s supercomputers. They told us the key might work, but probably not. What the f—! Heck?”

She looked at him for a full minute, then said, “I’ve worked with this code before.” With that, she started writing again.  
0----------------0  
As she worked, Eleanor’s mind wandered back in time. She’d been in the unpatrolled border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan and taken refuge in a cave. She had some time to wait for the Taliban convoy to move past, so she explored it. In an old wooden box in the very creepy back of the cave, there were several manuscripts. She couldn’t read them, so she stuck them in her backpack to study later. 

Over the next year, she’d found four other caches of documents. When she had needed a break from her intelligence activities, she’d snuck over the porous border to Pakistan, then went on to India. Spending a week in an Indian hotel room, she’d figured out a code key for interpreting the material. The manuscripts she had found were not like this document, but the same man had translated and encoded all of them. She had found translated historical records, Hindu religious texts, and a series of dark folk tales.

Eleanor had left that part of her life behind. She didn’t miss it.  
0--------------------------------0  
“I’m surprised you found someone willing to work with you on this,” the (eighth) tall man said. Thomas Leary was a representative of MI-6. MI-6 had custody of the document key, and the file was in his battered leather briefcase. He had a tony, public school British accent that fit his Saville Row suit and old school tie. “These documents are unusual and difficult to work with. I used to know someone…” He paused with the painful memory. “She encountered this translator/coder several times. She was very good at deciphering his work. You wouldn't have the key without her.”

“So why can’t she work with us now?” Juan asked. It would make things easier.

Tom paused. His voice was full of grief and sadness. “She’s dead.” Tom still regretted that his friend had died alone and unmourned. 

Not much I can say to that, Juan thought. “Well, I’ve got two of my engineers in there looking at the material. Apparently this professor’s translated part of the first page. Without the key, it’s probably useless.” Juan was sure the first sentences he’d seen were bullshit and she hadn’t gotten any farther. The time delay frustrated him. If they couldn’t get this working, they would miss the window to prevent the damage and destruction the rogue oil company executive had planned for the North Sea and have to deal with the fallout instead. 

Juan led the way to the conference room where Eleanor was working. He walked through the door, Tom following, Kurt behind Tom. Tom took two steps into the room and came to a dead stop. The world stopped. His heart stopped. He stood there and gaped. 

“ELEANOR! WHAT THE FUCK?” Tom’s accent changed to full-on Irish with the volume turned up to eleven. “WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU DEAD?” It sounded like ‘feck’ and ‘deed.’

Eleanor put her pencil down and sat back in her chair. “Watch your language, Tommy,” she said, quietly.

“You’re fucking dead!” Tommy walked over to her and tried to hug her. She backed her chair away. “Why the fucking hell aren’t you fucking dead?”

This was what she had worried about. Her past was coming back to haunt her in the form of a university classmate and fellow operator. She’d known Tommy for nineteen years and knew he’d been informed of her untimely death in a Kandahar slum. 

“Not so much,” Eleanor answered. She looked at Juan and Kurt. “I told you I didn’t need the key.” She turned her eyes back to Tommy. “I'm sorry you made the trip for nothing.”

Tommy sat carefully next to Eleanor. “You died.”

“Tommy, this is a discussion for another time.” She looked at Juan and Kurt again then back at Tommy, who was glaring at her. “I believe these gentlemen are in a hurry for me to finish this. We’ll talk about our situation later.”

“I still don’t get it,” Mark said. “He brought the key, but you don’t need it? You’ve can’t have seen this document before.” Eleanor didn’t know that someone had died retrieving it from a cave on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan not far from where she’d found her first cache. The clues from an ancient painted mural led the archaeologist to an equally ancient archive that had been plundered. Rumors of the archive being translated and hidden led the archaeologist to a cave, where he found this manuscript. During the handoff to Kurt Austin, he was killed, and Kurt barely escaped with his life—and the document.

“I’ve seen this man’s work before. I ran into it when I was doing…research. I used a different manuscript he copied and coded for my second dissertation.” She waited for that to sink in. “I think the writer was some kind of adventurer who came across a library of documents. Some of his word choices are more…casual, not scholarly. I think the caretaker—archivist—wouldn’t allow them to be removed, so the man transcribed them and worked up a code of sorts. The ones I’ve worked with all looked contemporaneously written. Like he translated them all in the same session or visit to the archive.” She shifted in her chair and continued. 

“His work shows up occasionally. I found the thirteen manuscripts I worked with in caves along the border—I have no idea why they were hidden. I used a document of folklore in my research. I think that particular document was hidden because the story was dark, demonic. I wanted a framework to translate his work that I could pass down in case more of it popped up after I’d finished with it, so I wrote this key. It’s more like a secret decoder ring than an answer key or a dictionary.”

“You don’t need the key because you wrote the key,” Kurt said. He looked at Juan and the two started laughing.

No one ever expected her to do the things she did. Flashing another teacher look, she said simply, “Yes.” Eleanor went back to work.  
0----------------------------0  
“Eleanor!” Juan shouted from the door of the conference room. She was totally absorbed in her work and it didn’t look like she’d moved since he left several hours ago. 

She jumped and her pencil skittered to the floor. “Yes?”

“We’re going for dinner. Would you like to join us?” He watched her place a hand on her chest. She’d been startled. “I’m sorry I scared you, but you didn’t hear me.” He’d called her name four times before she heard him. He’d started with “Professor,” then “Dr. Harris,” but her first name at high volume finally worked.

“You want me to join you?” Eleanor looked confused. Why would they want her to go to dinner with them? Then she realized she was hungry and everyone else had gone. She looked at the clock—she’d been working for ten hours with few breaks. There wasn’t much left to translate, but she thought they’d want her to work through it and finish tonight. He’d said they were in a hurry.

Her look was clear: ‘Who, me?’ Juan wondered why she thought they wouldn’t want her along. Maybe it was like Murph had told him—the smart kids were socially isolated, and she must be pretty smart to have figured out this code in a week. Her people skills seemed better than Murph’s, though. Dinner would be a chance to get to know her. They knew almost nothing about Eleanor Harris; a deep dive hadn’t yielded much. The flashes of emotion she’d shown through the day intrigued him. 

“Yes, please come. You deserve a break. We have enough time.” They were days ahead of where they thought they’d be. With the majority of the document decoded, it was up to the engineers to figure out the blueprints so they could build the final component. “The Officer’s Club back room. See you there.” He turned and left.

Before going to get Eleanor, Juan had asked Tom Leary if it would be appropriate to ask her to join them for dinner; Tom said yes. They’d asked Tom about Eleanor, but he said he had no information he would share. It was up to her to tell her story if she wanted them to know. It would be a good way for Juan to learn about her and dinner would be a good way to start figuring her out.  
0--------------------0  
Eleanor finished the page she was working on. While she worked, she dithered about going to dinner with the group. Were they serious about the invitation? Well, she could always show up, have a drink, and leave early. When she arrived at the officer’s club, the only seat left at the table was between Juan Cabrillo and Max Hanley. Juan stood and held her chair for her. Tommy, sitting across the table next to Captain Harrington, saluted her with his beer. Most of the men were listening to one of the female CIA agents telling a story that involved specific movements that showed off her breasts, especially now that she’d taken off her jacket. Her white dress shirt was translucent and didn’t conceal her push-up bra. 

Some of the men in the group had spent the time while Eleanor was working catching up with each other and putting together some plan of action. Mark and Eric had called the other engineers back after she’d translated just over half of the text. They’d worked through until about an hour ago and were discussing their findings.

The other CIA contact was sitting next to Juan on his right. She kept putting herself in his space and he kept edging closer to Eleanor. He had his left arm on the back of Eleanor’s chair but for some reason, it didn’t bother her. Max Hanley seemed to be moving closer to her on her left. His touch did bother her, so she kept edging closer to Juan. Finally, they were touching, his thigh to her thigh. He was warm and solid. Eleanor resisted the urge to look where he was touching her. If it didn’t affect him, she wouldn’t let it affect her. But it did.

The table was on its third round of drinks when the waitress finally took her first order. Invisible Eleanor… Now that Translucent Shirt was finished with her story, Captain Harrington asked her across the table, “Have they found you a permanent office yet, Eleanor?”

She laughed and shook her head no. “They can’t do anything to rebuild Oldman Hall until they settle the lawsuits. There are twelve now, so not any time soon. I’ll be in a local middle school in the fall. They ran out of space in the high school I was in last year, so I had to move.”

“You work in a middle school? I thought you were a professor at Old Dominion,” Mark Murphy asked. Everything he’d seen and heard about Eleanor was confusing. He’d gone over to her to get some pages she’d finished and put his hand on her shoulder; she’d shied away like she’d been burnt. He’d hinted at asking her out, but she’d turned him down—gently. 

“Yes, I am. Associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies. My building was taken down--imploded--because of black mold. It was so bad, it would have cost more to remediate than rebuild. Even though I have tenure, they don’t have enough office space on campus for all of us, so I volunteered to go to a public school building. I have a half-time course load online and I manage the department library.” Eleanor answered. “The university contracts with the school district in a mutual aid situation. They have space, we have people.”

Mark had taken a job in the defense industry after earning his doctorate. He could have stayed in academia and he had an interest in the careers of those who did. He might want to retire to a professorship someday. “How long did it take you to get tenure?” Mark asked. “What research did you do?” He knew how difficult it was to get tenure in the sciences, and even more difficult in the humanities. It was ‘publish or perish’ to advance a career. There were a lot of people and few positions. She wasn’t that old—probably his age, early thirties.

She took a sip of tea. “I’ve been at Old Dominion for three years now. My research is in central Asian linguistics. I was nominated for tenure after two years.”

Mark was astounded. “Two years? You got tenure in two years?” Juan looked at his weapons officer and then at Eleanor next to him. Why was Mark so surprised about her tenure? Juan knew a little about academic ranks, but not this part of it. “What did you do to get tenure that early?” Mark continued.

“I had my third book at the printer, and my fourth book was with my editor,” Eleanor replied as modestly as she could.

Kurt put in, “You’ve written four books?” She had two doctoral degrees; he’d caught that reference. A tenured professor, early (apparently that was a big deal), and she’d written four books? Apparently ‘Max’ the computer came up with the right answer after all when she’d recommended Eleanor Harris.

She had the attention of the table now. Honest but modest, Eleanor. “Well. The fourth book is at the printer now. Five is with my editor in the first revision. Six is about halfway done.” She looked around and continued, “I have one more book due under that contract, and I have a couple of others in a different genre in the works. About 80,000 words between the two of those books so far this summer.” It was mid-June, so that was approximately a month since school was out. 

Crickets.

Mark picked up again, “Damn. You have a seven-book contract? What subject?” 

Another sip of tea. “I’m doing a series primarily for the female engagement teams through the Defense Language Institute. Cultural studies and specialized vocabulary in common women’s issues. Each volume is a different language; in Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, Tajik, Urdu, Arabic, and Kazakh.” 

Joe Zavala spoke to her for the first time. “You speak seven languages?” Before Eleanor could answer, Tommy and Captain Harrington laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Max asked the Captain.

“Eleanor doesn’t speak seven languages.” Captain Harrington took a healthy drink from his beer then continued, “Eleanor speaks, what…?” He looked at her. Tommy took up the conversation. “My last count was twenty-six. Languages.”

“I call bullshit on that,” Not Translucent Shirt put in immediately. Eleanor thought this one’s name was Sarah. Neither of the women was happy the attention of the table had shifted to Eleanor.

“I’m sorry, Tommy. You’re behind,” Eleanor said politely. “It’s thirty-four now. That’s including the seven classical languages I know. I don’t think I know enough Aramaic to count it. I minored in theology and archaeology. ” She looked pointedly at Sarah.

“Qué chingados! Eso es una locura. ¿Cómo coño haces eso?” Joe said something in Spanish only a few of the people at the table understood. Apparently Juan next to her spoke Spanish; she knew Lang Overholt did. They looked at each other and smiled.

“Cuidado con lo que dice, Senor Zavala,” (You should watch your language, Mr. Zavala), she replied. 

“And Spanish is one of those languages,” Juan laughed. Eleanor nodded.

“I still call bullshit,” Sarah said. “No one speaks that many languages.”

Tommy and Captain Harrington answered together, “Eleanor does.”

Eleanor was done with the patronizing. No, she wasn’t attractive like Sarah, but she was smart. Way smart. “Hyperpolyglots do.” Her voice was quiet but firm. 

“What’s a hyperpolyglot?” Max asked. He’d never heard that word.

Eleanor turned to Max, bringing her back close enough to Juan’s chest to feel him. “I have a gift with languages. It takes me about a week of living anywhere—immersion—to be fairly fluent in a language. After a month, I can read and write the language as well. After a year, you wouldn’t know I’m not a native speaker.” She took another sip of her iced tea. “I’ve lived in many countries and learned all the languages I’ve encountered.”

Lang asked, “How were you not recruited for the Agency?” With those skills, he would have known if she was a CIA employee. When he looked at her, he had a sense of déjà vu. He’d had it all day. He knew he’d seen her somewhere before, but he couldn’t identify the time or place. 

Eleanor thought for a minute and decided on “Avoidance behavior. And yes, you do know me.” She’d read his consternation several times, not being able to figure out whether or not he knew her.

“Where do I know you from?” 

Eleanor shook her head. Her students would have recognized the look—over the glasses and slightly disapproving. “I’m first and foremost a teacher. Teachers don’t give you the answers. We make you figure them out for yourself. You learn more that way.” The look on Lang’s face was priceless. 

She smiled a real smile for the first time. Juan noticed her profile. It was a nice smile. “I’m kidding, Lang. I’ll tell you later, but I’d rather change the subject right now. Enough about me. What project is this for?”

Crickets.

Sarah and Translucent Shirt looked around expectantly. Apparently they didn’t know, either. 

After a pause, Max answered carefully. “We’re trying to recreate the invention in the document.”

The project was very sensitive, then. Eleanor defused the situation with a little humor. “So you don’t know, either?” She grinned at Max. 

Max realized her strategy. A way to change a subject they didn’t want to discuss. “You got that right! I guess we’ll know when you know.”

Very diplomatic, Juan thought, and with a sense of humor. Hmmm…  
0------------------------------0  
Dinner wrapped up and Eleanor rose to leave. She’d signaled Tommy to hold off another day. She didn’t want to deal with him just then, and he’d be staying overnight in Virginia anyway.

“Eleanor!” Lang caught up with her halfway through the empty club bar, as she was headed for the parking lot. “Okay. Own up. Where do I know you from?” 

Eleanor took out her phone and brought up her music app. She chose a Strauss waltz and pressed ‘play.’ The opening notes of The Blue Danube floated out and Eleanor held out her arms for Lang to take her into the dance. He obliged, smiling. Now he knew where he’d met her.

“Good Lord! Eleanor Simmons! How long ago was it?” Lang smiled down at her as he waltzed her around the empty room. Neither had noticed Juan come up behind them. He was standing at the bar, watching them.

“Twenty-one years.” They were back at Eleanor’s phone. “Did I ever tell you how much I appreciated your help that night?” Her voice was low and sincere, full of emotion. She wasn’t smiling.

“Since when do you know how to dance?” Juan asked Lang. He knew a lot about Lang, they’d been partners, but he didn’t know that Lang was a good dancer. 

“Juan, I’d like you to meet—” Lang started.

“Stop, please.” Eleanor was a little more vehement than she intended, and both men looked at her closely. She looked between them. “I’m Eleanor Harris.” She said her last name firmly. “I dropped the other part years ago and I refuse to use it.” She turned to Juan, then looked to see if anyone else was around. “Juan, you know my mother.”

“How would I know your mother?” he asked. He’d never heard of Eleanor Harris in his life.

“Juan, her mother is Elaine Simmons,” Lang whispered. He understood why Eleanor didn’t want people to know. Elaine Simmons was a legend at Langley. A force to be reckoned with. She was abrasive, aggressive, and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Her authority and influence went far and wide. If she liked you, she liked you. If she didn’t like you, you might as well kiss your career at the CIA goodbye. Then he did a doubletake. “You’re dead!” Lang exclaimed. He hadn’t been present when Tommy arrived with the key.

Eleanor shook her head. “Well, yes. But obviously not.” The look on his face! “Okay. I should explain Lang’s part, but not here.” She thought for a moment. “Why don’t you come over to my house and I’ll tell you the story.”  
0-------------------0  
Eleanor pulled her car into the garage. Juan pulled his rental behind her, and three men exited the car. She hadn’t expected Max, but, oh, well. “Come through the garage,” she called. When they were in the garage, she pushed the door button and they went into the house. She dropped her keys and briefcase on the kitchen counter and pointed at the sideboard in the dining room. “Fix yourself a drink if you want one. Have a seat.” She waved at the table and went to the sink. She took down a glass and filled it with water then sat at the table.

“Yes, my parents are Arthur and Elaine Simmons-Harris. Mother never used Harris—she kept her maiden name.” She took a sip and continued, “Supposedly, both of them were in the Foreign Service. Mother wasn’t, obviously, and you know that.” Another sip. “Mother tried to recruit me, even set up a scenario to drag me in, but I refused to go. I spent a decade working in Central Asia for an NGO that works to end sex trafficking.” Her cover story.

“But Elaine told everyone who knew she had a daughter—and that’s not many people—that you died. About four years ago,” Lang was one of the few people who knew Eleanor had ever existed. Her mother would have preferred Eleanor hadn’t existed at all. Ever. 

“I faked my own death. There’s a lot I needed to get away from. In my work, I made some enemies, and it was the best way I could think of to get out.” Eleanor put her hands on the table, fingers laced together. She looked at Juan and Max. “You saw us dancing. That was the clue Lang needed to figure out how he knows me.” She smiled sardonically. “We met twenty-one years ago at the Embassy in Rome. Mother and Father were stationed there. An embassy ball.”

“At the time, I wondered why Elaine would invite her daughter to the party. How old were you?” Lang asked.

“Thirteen,” Eleanor answered. Juan and Max sported raised eyebrows. Thirteen-year-old children weren’t invited to official events. It wasn’t appropriate.

“Then I saw Eleanor talking to people—translating, really—for people who weren’t able to speak English well. Working the room like she was born to it. And not just whatever language to English. I remember Italian to Russian. Eleanor obviously is good with languages, so she’d be an asset at an Embassy event. I could see that.” He sat back in his chair. “After dinner, there was dancing. And there were two men there who were harassing Eleanor.”

“Harassing?” Max was puzzled. 

“Max, my mother is a very strict, demanding woman, and as a parent, at least as my parent, she set impossibly high standards. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I would have been in big trouble if I’d made a scene.” To Juan, she looked very uncomfortable talking about this. “If I’d refused to dance with these men, there would have been a scene, and a scandal, and a disaster. The fallout from Mother would have been even worse than what they were planning to do to me. So I felt I had to put up with it. I knew...I knew I was on my own. '

“They were taking turns,” Lang said. He’d been angry at the time, and he was angry about it now.

“The first one asked me to dance, then the other cut in, and back and forth. They danced me away from the main party and were trying to get me out of the area altogether.” She closed her eyes at the memory. “At first it seemed like they were playing a joke, but now I know they were serious. They were groping me. Their hands on my ass, pinching it; grabbing my boobs through my dress; and one of them actually stuck his hand down the front, into my bra.” She shuddered.

“And your mother didn’t notice this?” Juan was incredulous. He thought a mother would keep a closer eye on her daughter, especially one that young. And where was her father in all this? What kind of parents let this happen to their child?

“Mother noticed,” Eleanor admitted. “She noticed and she turned a blind eye to it.” She looked away. “She may have put them up to it.” She went silent thinking about it. They all saw her discomfort and embarrassment.

“Anyway,” Lang started again. “Another guest and I noticed it and saw how upset Eleanor was getting over their behavior.” He looked at her. “God, the look on your face!” He remembered her, white as a sheet, trying not to cry or struggle, but desperate to get away. And she didn’t believe help would come. That was what he’d really seen on her face—despair. 

“I was terrified. Trapped. I couldn’t do anything about either of them and I was scared they were going to get me alone.” She shuddered again. Her voice was low and scared, “I was sure I knew what they would do to me.” 

Lang turned back to Juan and Max. “We cut in, and for the rest of the night, we danced with Eleanor until it was acceptable for her to leave. Kept them away from her. I escorted her to the family quarters myself to keep her from getting hijacked.” He paused and looked intently at Eleanor again. “Tell them who it was.”

Eleanor took a deep breath. “The other helpful guest was Admiral Jim Sandecker.” They knew him from NUMA. “The two assholes were…Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton. At the time, he was President Clinton. And you know what they’ve done through the years.”

“And no one noticed the President dancing off with a teenager?” Max was skeptical. 

“No one cared,” Eleanor said sadly. “The man had extramarital affairs, plural. That whole Monica Lewinsky thing was the tip of the iceberg. It’s not the Secret Service’s job to enforce morals. They protect him from outside threats. They don’t protect teenagers—women—from him.” Jeffrey Epstein had been accused of sexual assault with several underage girls; Eleanor was sure the accusations were true. She was lucky she wasn't one of Epstein's victims.

“Sweet Jesus!” Juan said. Sexually assaulting a thirteen-year-old girl. “But I see Elaine turning a blind eye to that to advance her career.” Juan thought of her as the dark to Lang’s light. He looked at Max. “Elaine embodies everything I hated about the Agency. She’s a real bitch.”

“The incident sparked my interest in human trafficking. Stopping it. I would just rather people didn’t know Elaine is my mother, and I absolutely do not want my parents to know I’m alive,” Eleanor looked between the three men. “I hope I can trust you to keep my secret.”

“Are you living off a life insurance policy?” Max asked, at least half seriously.

“No, Max, I did not commit insurance fraud,” Eleanor laughed. “I worked abroad under an alias. Now, I use my own social security number and birth certificate.” She grew serious. “There was—is—no way my parents can get a death certificate for me and they’d need that for any insurance. There’s no body—it would have been deemed irretrievable.” At their look, she added, “I overengineered the explosives when I…faked my death. There’s no proof I died, and no proof I didn’t. I had no life insurance. My parents would have to wait seven years to legally declare me dead and if they tried, if a family member reported to the court I was still alive, it would extend that indefinitely.” She was silent for a moment, then added, “Father’s parents knew—his side of the family knows I’m alive, but they have nothing to do with Mother. She cut off Father’s contact with his family. He didn’t go to either Grandpa’s or Grandma’s funeral.”

“His own parents?” Juan was astounded. His parents were older, and he didn’t see them often, but he stayed in contact with them as much as possible. They’d been great parents, he realized that, even as a child. He was right about Eleanor—there was more to her than he’d imagined.  
0------------------------0  
Eleanor was back at Little Creek early the next morning, at work before anyone else. She needed to finish before her afternoon appointment. Tommy came in right after she started. 

“Eleanor.” Tommy sat down and looked at her. He took her pencil and waited for her to speak.

“I made too many enemies. You know that.” He nodded. “I was done. I was tired of the violence. She moved closer, but not touching him, and she whispered, “I got angry—so angry I was taking unnecessary risks. Every day it was worse.” She was known for a calm, detached attitude in her missions. “Tommy, I started hunting. I went looking for them. Finally, I let myself be taken by human traffickers.” The end of that mission had been bloody and violent and that’s when she knew she had to be done with that part of her life.

“Good God, Ellie!” Tommy remembered Eleanor as one of the most even-tempered people he’d ever met. She never got mad and she never took unnecessary chances. She balanced risk versus reward in a cold, calculated way, whether it was how to kill her target or what to order for dinner. He’d always admired her detachment. That’s what had made her such an effective operator. To hear she’d done something totally out of character floored him. “You could have been,” he paused, “killed, raped, trafficked.” That scared him more than the method she’d used to disappear—an explosion in an IED factory. She was his friend as well as occasional field partner and he loved her like a sister. 

She nodded. “I was very lucky. I’m lucky I survived. If I’d stayed in country much longer, my luck would have run out, I know.”

“We mourned you. Anna was devasted. You couldn’t have let me in on the plan?”

“Not if I wanted to really sell it. I knew you watched the newspaper where I ran the notice, and it was on _Al Jazeera._ I knew you’d tell Adam and he’d tell Mother.” Logical. That’s exactly what he’d done. He’d gone to see her oldest brother in person to tell him Eleanor was dead. And Adam had told Elaine. 

“Tommy, Anna is the best friend I’ve ever had. It was a hard decision to cut off your family, but I needed to keep your wife and children safe. I felt it was worth the sacrifice.”

She heard the group before she saw them. Max, Juan, and Lang were coming in. “How do you two know each other?” Max asked. The mousy little translator knew a high-level executive from MI-6? 

Eleanor smiled. “Tommy and I were at University together.” She was much younger than Tommy and it was a coincidence that they had been in the same program.

He nodded, ‘yes.’ “I’d been in the SAS for ten years. I thought I was hot shit.” (He’d reverted to his Irish accent and pronounced it ‘shite.’) I was recruited for MI-6 but I’d have to go to university and get my degree. I was accepted at Oxford. My first class on my first day—”

Eleanor cut in, “You were late.”

Tommy nodded. “I was late. The only seat left in the class was next to Eleanor. We were in the same program, Middle Eastern Studies. Eventually, we became friends.”

“Tommy’s wife Anna was my college roommate,” Eleanor added. “And eventually I became the teacher and he was my student.” She’d had a section of advanced language tutoring; Tommy had been in that section.

“I thought I was smart, but then I met Eleanor. I should mention that when we first met, she was fifteen.” He shook his head. “She lived with me and my wife after we got married. My youngest daughter is named Eleanor.”

He stood. “You don’t need me, so I’m going home. CJ has a recital coming up and I don’t want to miss it.” He patted Eleanor on the shoulder before she could flinch away. 

“You can’t tell anyone.” She reprimanded him sternly, then tempered her reaction. “Please?”

“I’m letting Anna and Gran in on your secret. Who are they going to tell?” he replied. “Gran was quite upset when we told her you’d passed.” 

Eleanor looked at the other men. “I learned Irish by visiting Tommy’s family at holidays and staying with his grandmother at her house.” She turned back to Tommy. “No one else, Tommy. Now get out of here. Tell Anna to call me after the recital.” Tommy saluted the room and left. 

“How are you doing with it, Eleanor?” Juan asked. He came over and sat next to her, taking the seat Tommy had vacated. 

She showed him her progress. “I’ve done all but the last four pages. Dr. Murphy and Mr. Stone have started trying to figure out the engineering, and they seem to have made some progress. Mr. Zavala is with them now.”

Juan was close to her, his head next to hers looking at the translation. “Arabic? I’ve never seen some of these words.”

“You speak Arabic?” She turned more toward him and put down the pencil. 

He smiled. “And Russian and Spanish. I know Spanish is one of yours. Lang mentioned Russian?”

“Da. My pereyekhali v moskvu, kogda mne bylo chetyre.” (We moved to Moscow when I was four.) “We lived there for three years.” Gosh, he was close to her.

“Then?” he asked.

“Berlin then Paris. Mother and Father left Paris when I was twelve, but I stayed and was in boarding school there. They went to Rome, and then back to Berlin. After Paris, I went to university in England, and then disappeared into the ether to avoid Mother.” A very brief and highly edited version of her life. He was very close to her, attentive and smiling. Was he flirting with her? How would she know? She hadn’t flirted with anyone in what, twelve? Thirteen? years. At least. Not since the agent she'd been working with dumped her and married someone else.  
0------------------0  
Thirty-four languages. A family member in the spy business. He’d bet his new ship she had field experience and not with an NGO. A close contact in MI-6 certainly made that likely. The Corporation used a highly advanced translation algorithm when needed, but all those languages would be helpful. The Corporation could use someone like Eleanor. He’d talk to Max about recruiting her.

Juan remained in the seat next to her as the rest of his team came in. He handed the pages to Mark and Max as she finished them. Most of the men were engineers of some sort, so to her, they were speaking what seemed to be a foreign language. 

“Eleanor, there’s a word here that doesn’t make sense.” Mark spoke for the group. “Is there some other meaning it could be?” He read the part he didn’t understand. 

“Again, not an engineer, but it could mean a form of pressure,” she thought. “There are parts of the document that talk about water. Fluid dynamics? Hydraulics?” She shrugged. 

“YES! That makes sense!” Joe shouted. They'd decided this device was some kind of pump-driven machine.

It seems they’d figured it out. She turned back to Juan to find him smiling at her, an appraising look in his eyes.  
0-----------------------0  
Eleanor gathered her briefcase and keys. She was done earlier than expected and it was time for her to go. Juan saw her leaving and came over. “May I walk you out?” 

In addition to his expensive clothing and shoes, Eleanor had noticed his lovely manners. “Of course,” she answered, smiling. Flirting? With her? It sure looked like flirting.

Juan put his hand on the small of her back and guided her out the door. “Do you have a minute?”

Eleanor looked at her phone. She didn’t wear a watch. “I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m picking up my niece and nephew from the airport. The kids were visiting their parents.” They’d reached her car. “My youngest brother’s known I’m alive since right after. He’s in the foreign service and he and his wife are in Japan. Their two youngest kids couldn’t accompany them, so I’m the allegedly responsible adult looking after them. That was my brother’s house last night.”

“Will you be around in a couple of weeks?” Juan wondered. “We should be finished with this project by then.” Finished—or dead with an environmental disaster on their hands.

“I’m here for the next two years,” she replied. “Laura, the youngest, will be a junior this fall. I’m in it until she graduates.”

“Then I know where to find you.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Thank you for all your help.” He turned and walked back into the building. She watched him until he was out of sight. Then she reached up and touched where he’d kissed her. That hadn’t felt like business. His attitude toward her had her puzzled. Was it possible he was interested in HER?  
0-----------------------0  
Her phone rang and the number came up as ‘Private Caller.’ Usually, these were spam calls, but something made her answer. “Hello?”

“Eleanor, it’s Juan Cabrillo. Are you free this evening?” He wasn’t dead and they’d prevented a disaster.

She smiled. It had been flirting! Hadn’t it? “As it happens, I am free.”

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” 

A date! “Yes, I’d love to do.” Was it a date? It sounded like a date. She hoped it was a date.

“I’ll pick you up at seven.” Juan was smiling into his phone.

“What’s the dress code?” Eleanor was smiling on her end.

“Dress code?” Juan knew what she wanted to know, but he thought he’d drag out their conversation a little.

“Stinker,” she laughed. “When you were here, you were wearing a designer jacket and Italian loafers.”

“You noticed?” Juan was surprised but pleased she’d noticed. “I’ll be wearing a jacket and tie. Does that tell you what you need to know?” His parents hadn’t formally dressed for dinner, but a certain level of effort had been required. The habit stuck, and, anyway, Juan was a clothes horse. He had a large closet full of designer clothes and shoes.

“It does. Thank you.” Oh, shit. She’d have to go buy a dress. They signed off and Eleanor yelled, “Laura! Fashion emergency!”  
0-------------------------0  
Laura had insisted on doing her makeup. She absolutely had to do it because she didn’t want her Auntie Ellie to embarrass her. Eleanor was ready twenty minutes early, but she was afraid to put on her dress until the last minute. Please God she could get through the dinner without wearing her entrée, she was that nervous. Juan, of course, was right on time. Laura zipped her up just as the doorbell rang.  
0-----------------0  
It was a lovely restaurant, quiet and intimate. Linen napkins, candles, flowers. Juan had ordered for her the way gentlemen used to do. He’d had wine, and she knew he’d chosen something expensive. She’d checked him out through some of her contacts and found out he was the Chairman of a group of mercenaries known as The Corporation. It was obviously a lucrative enterprise. A recent international news arc featured a series about an environmental crisis averted. A corrupt private oil company had tried to pump where they shouldn’t have done. The chief executive had been arrested for fraud, theft, and murder. A new hydraulic instrument resurrected from an ancient mural had saved the day.

Juan told her some funny stories about his work. She told him about growing up as a ‘diplobrat,’ a child of parents in the Foreign Service. They shared confidences. They laughed. She felt like they had a lot in common. Then, over dessert, he’d dropped his bombshell. The reason he’d asked her out. No, that wasn’t right—he hadn’t asked her out. It was why he’d invited her to have dinner with him.

“Work for you? You want me to work for you?” Eleanor was stunned but managed to keep her voice even. Not a date. So not a date. He’d never intended to get to know her as a woman. To get to know HER. How had she misread this so badly? Simple, her inner voice said. You forgot who you are. She’d never generated male interest and likely never would. Her mind flashed back to incidents in college where men had hidden their true motives behind fake interest. Juan's interest was all her imagination and wishful thinking. Thank goodness she had a great poker face. 

“Yes. I think you’d be a great fit for the Corporation.” Juan and Max discussed how well Eleanor’s skills would fit with their mission. He wanted her to work for him, so he was pouring on the charm. His smile sparkled and his eyes glittered with a ‘come hither’ expression. “We have a great benefits package in addition to the salary.” He prided himself on how he treated his employees. His favorite thing was writing bonus checks for his crew. In addition to their customary fee, the cash the oil company murderer had squirreled away fattened Juan’s bank balance and he shared the wealth generously.

That was an easy turndown. “I have no interest in the money. I’m happy with the salary I have now.” She lived frugally out of habit and didn’t need much money anyway.

She looked at the crème brȗlèe on her plate and put down her spoon. She didn’t think another bite would go down. “I’m flattered you’ve considered me.” She moved her poker face into a carefully crafted smile. “But no. No, thank you.” Suck it up, Eleanor.

“I know you’re taking care of your niece and nephew for a while, but you could work out of Norfolk for now.” Juan watched her carefully. She’d seemed taken aback by his offer at first, but quickly recovered her composure.

“That’s not the only reason. It’s one of several reasons,” she said softly. “I’m happy where I am. I like teaching.” She’d accepted a high-school teaching position out of college many years ago, but her mother had other ideas and she hadn’t been able to take the job. “And I’m writing. I might concentrate on that.”

“What could I do to change your mind?” His voice sounded seductive and it grated her nerves in the face of his true motivation.

“There’s nothing.” She shook her head. “No. Just no.” Obviously this hadn’t ever been a date. She should have known better. Eleanor flashed back to the border guard’s face when she removed her niqab. The ugly disguise she’d worn in the field seemed to fit her better than her real face. It was how people—especially men—saw her.

Juan sensed something else was going on, but he wasn’t sure what. He’d keep digging. This wasn’t the end if he didn’t want it to be, so he changed the subject. Their conversation continued and he finished his dessert.  
0-------------------------0  
The drive to her house had been quiet. She seemed to be in her head, not paying attention to him. What was she thinking? He pulled into her driveway and turned to her. “Eleanor, I rarely get turned down when I ask people to come work for me. Can you tell me why? What are your other reasons?” 

She looked straight ahead, not at Juan. “You’re thinking I’d be good with fieldwork. That I have experience. You would be right about the experience. Eleven years of it.” She sat, quiet and still, and he waited for her to continue. “I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t. I can’t physically handle it.” She’d been injured in the explosion when she faked her death. How much should she tell him? “I know you have extensive security to keep yourselves under the radar, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’m dead and I want to stay that way. Those are the reasons.”

“We have jobs that don’t involve fieldwork.” He was still trying to persuade her. She wanted to beg him to stop.

She shook her head. “No.” 

“There’s something else. Something you’re not telling me.” He was working on instinct, and his instincts were never wrong. He couldn’t convince her if he didn’t know what was holding her back.

She’d hoped to get out of here with a little dignity, but no. She sensed he’d keep pushing. Right from the first moment she saw him, she’d identified Juan as a leader in the group of men. He had an air of command. Another thing she’d noticed about Juan was the force of his personality. He had to be relentless to do the job he did. If he wasn’t, he’d be dead. What she’d learned from her contact only confirmed her intuition—he pursued his objective until he had a win, or he died in the attempt. There had been a lot of wins for him. 

Eleanor was still looking straight ahead. “I have a question.” Her voice was quiet and controlled. She paused. He said nothing as he waited for her to continue. “I’m only guessing, but I think you discourage office romances. And you would never date an employee. Am I correct?”

He was taken aback. That wasn’t what he’d expected her to ask. She’d worked closely with Mark Murphy. And Eric Stone. They would be close in age, so maybe that’s what she meant. “You are correct. We strongly discourage relationships among coworkers. And, no, I would never date an employee.” 

She had her hands in her lap and was still staring straight ahead, then she turned slowly to him and held out her hand. “Take my hand. Just hold my hand.” He did as she asked, and she looked down at their hands, hers small and pale, his large and tanned. She sighed. “You seem to notice things, but you probably didn’t notice this. When we went to dinner the first evening we worked on the document, I was sitting very close to you. I didn’t mean to do, but Max kept edging over toward me when he turned to talk to Kurt Austin. You were moving away from Not Translucent Shirt, and I was moving away from Max. And we sat most of the evening touching at some point on our bodies. My knee to your knee, your arm on the back of my chair. You came and sat close to me the next day. You had your hand on my back when you walked me to my car.” She deliberately left out the kiss.

“What was the problem?” He had no idea where she was going with this. She let go of his hand and put hers back in her lap. She stared down at them.

“There wasn’t a problem. That’s my point.” She took a deep breath before she admitted. “I can’t stand to be touched. Children, my niece and nephews, that’s one thing. I can give them physical affection. But most people, especially men, I can’t stand to be too close to them, much less touch them. Or let them touch me. My skin just crawls. It’s a physical and mental aversion. I’ve known Tommy for almost twenty years, he’s like my brother, I literally came back from the dead, and I couldn’t stand to let him hug me.” Another deep breath. “You’re the only man that’s touched me like this in ten years.”

Ten years? What the fuck? He just stared at her. Had she been sexually assaulted?

She saw his expression and guessed his thoughts. Still staring at her hands, she nodded: 'yes,' and she swallowed hard, “and there were some other…incidents. Where it was a very close thing. And in Muslim countries, men don’t touch women who aren’t their wives. And the Epstein incident.” She paused again. “I know I’m not very experienced at this kind of thing, but I thought tonight was something else. Not a recruitment interview.” She went silent. 

“I’m sorry, but what?” he asked. “What else would it be?” ‘But a recruitment interview’ was the unspoken conclusion to his thought. 

Yes, he was persistent. She tried again. “I completely misread the situation. I don’t usually do that. It can be fatal. Now, it’s just embarrassing.” 

“I’m still not getting this,” Juan was puzzled. What was she talking about?

She looked frustrated and hurt. Why couldn’t he figure this out? Why was he making her say the words? To humiliate her? “I thought you’d asked me out on a date. But that wasn’t your motivation. I misread the situation.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “I don’t want to work for you. I wanted to date you.” She didn’t dare say anything about the relationship she’d really like to have.

A date? That was old fashioned. A ‘date?’ With Eleanor? 

“Date me? You want to date me? You’re kidding. I must be ten years older than you are. That can’t be what you want.”

She struggled to keep her composure. She was angry and embarrassed and devastated. Patronized, marginalized. Typically, it was how men saw her—the plain, geeky girl. Too young or too old, always too smart. Not pretty enough, or tall enough, or whatever enough. And she must be desperate, so she'd want to have sex, right? Even when she said no. A burka-wearing nonentity. Never worthy of a man’s time or interest. Her inner voice was screaming at her—she should have known better. 

“Not what I want? You think I don’t know what I want?” Her voice was tight. Well, she’d show him. “Close your eyes.” 

“Say again?” What the hell? Now he was really confused.

“Please. Just close your eyes.” She waited and, with a loud sigh, he closed them. He had beautiful blue eyes. She’d noticed that, too. 

“Now, visualize this.” She looked out the window again, unable to look at him even with his eyes closed. Her voice was low and seductive and underlain with longing. “It’s evening. We’re together. Maybe we have dinner, talk about our day, maybe we don’t. Maybe we cuddle on the couch for a while.” She shifted slightly. “That’s what I want.”

“I want to hold your hand and walk up the stairs together. I want to close and lock the door at the end of the hall. I want privacy, just you and me. I want you to take the pins from my hair and tease it loose with your fingers as you kiss me. I want you to unzip my dress and watch it fall to the floor. I want to loosen your tie and unbutton your shirt. Push it off your shoulders. Unbuckle your belt. I want to see all of you.” She paused to let that sink in. “I want to lie between cool, crisp sheets on a soft bed. I want your hands to pull me to you. I want to feel your warm skin touching mine.” She paused and took a deep breath. 

“I want lips swollen from your kisses. I want to hold your face in my hands and kiss you back. I want beard burn on my face and my neck and my breasts. I want my nipples to be hard nubs under your hands. I want to trace the planes of your shoulders with my fingers and my lips. I want to feel the hair on your chest against my chest. I want to gasp as you kiss and touch your way down my body. I want to feel your fingers and your tongue. I want to make fists in the sheets and gasp and moan as you touch me.” 

She paused again to build anticipation. “I want to taste all of you. I want to take you deep into my mouth. I want to bring you to the edge. I want to open myself to you and take you deep into my body. I want to grip your thighs with mine. I want to cross my ankles in the small of your back. I want to move with you.”

Sweet Jesus. He’d had no idea. His eyes opened and he started to say something, but she put a gentle hand on his arm. She wasn’t done, and she was looking at him now, her face on fire.

“I want to scream your name when I come apart. I want to hear you moan as you explode. I want to take your weight as you come down.” She took a ragged breath.

“I want to fall asleep tangled in the sheets with you. I want to wake up spooned together, with your hand cupping my breast. I want to kiss you good morning. I want to pull off the towel you wrapped around your hips and look at you after you shower. I want to kiss you as I dry your back. I want to get in your way when you shave. I want to kiss you again as I button your shirt and tie your tie. I want you to zip my dress. I want to hand you a cup of coffee and kiss you goodbye before you walk out the door. And I want to do it all over again at the end of the day.” 

She took another breath and her voice was less steady. “I know what I want, Juan. That’s what I thought this was building toward. Now I know you don’t see me that way. I don’t know anything about relationships. I’m not experienced, but I do have feelings. I know you’re persistent and tenacious and you always get what you want. I know that because you’re alive.” She closed her eyes for a long moment and then looked at him. “Once you offered me a job, I knew this was over. I didn’t want to say anything, but you wouldn’t have let this go until I told you how I feel.” 

He just looked at her. She looked back at him steadily, like she was marshaling her emotional resources. “I get that you’re not interested in me as anything but another tool for your enterprise. I get that you’re not interested in ME.” No one was or is or ever will be, that inner voice reminded her. “But you could have just said ‘No.’ You didn’t have to be mean.” Her voice broke on her last sentence.

She opened the door, got out of the car, and walked quickly to the door with the small amount of dignity she could muster. Her head was down, and she was probably crying. He watched her punch in the lock code and walk through it. The door closed behind her. 

He was speechless. It was obvious she was a writer. She’d painted a helluva picture with her words. No wonder she’d published four books. Eleanor was right—he wanted her to work for him and he wouldn’t have stopped asking until she’d been totally honest. He’d been described as dogged, determined, relentless. She was right about his character: if he wasn’t all those things and more, he’d be dead.

And he realized he was aroused. ‘Need a cold shower’ aroused. He felt like a teenager with his unexpected physical reaction. That was a very erotic picture she’d given him. When Juan finally cooled off enough to think again, he realized she’d not only left the passenger door partly open, she’d left her purse and her wrap. He’d embarrassed her badly for her to have done that.

Then it clicked for him.

“Shit,” he said out loud to himself. Eleanor had been honest about her feelings. He’d been so focused on recruiting her for the Corporation he’d ignored everything else. He had actually tried to charm her into working for him. He’d charmed her, alright, but not in the way he’d intended. And he had to be honest—she hadn’t ‘misread the situation.’ The things she’d said were things he wanted, too. He wanted them with Eleanor. He was interested in HER.

There hadn’t been many women since his wife died. She’d driven drunk and killed herself and it had closed off something inside of him. Amy had been the love of his life. He’d pictured having a family with her. Someday retiring from the Agency and growing old together. Those dreams were buried with her. After being forced out of the CIA and forming his Corporation, Juan had decided the love of his life was _the Oregon,_ his ship. He had no other home and his crew was his family now. 

Maybe he’d have to rethink that decision. He picked up her purse and the silky rectangle she’d worn over her dress in the restaurant. 

Her dress! It had been very plain and simple. Black, just above the knee. Not too revealing but showing some cleavage. And it had molded to her body like a second skin. Every curve was highlighted. It didn’t look sleazy in spite of the figure-hugging fabric and short skirt. It was sexy, yes, but in an understated way. It was Eleanor. 

Her perfume clung to her wrap. Subtle but sexy. It was warm and sensual, like her words. Like her words, it wrapped around him and drew him in. Hopefully, she’d answer the door. He didn’t know if her niece and nephew were home, but it wouldn’t do to embarrass her in front of them. Quietly. He stood on her porch and rang the bell.

Eleanor was standing at the kitchen counter. She had planned to put her purse there, but there was no purse in her hand. She’d left it in the car. Shit. She’d made the biggest fool of herself! Now she had to compound her shame and hope he hadn’t driven off with it. He had no reason to stay, to care about her things. Do it now, she told herself. Walk back out to the car, humiliate yourself even further. Just get it over with. She knew if she waited she would never be able to summon the courage to call him and ask for them back. She didn’t have his number and she didn’t have the nerve. And, anyway, her phone was in her purse!

The doorbell rang. She took a deep breath and grabbed a tissue from the box, dabbing her eyes. She’d probably ruined her mascara and looked like a raccoon. 

Please God he wouldn’t laugh at her feelings. But it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. Oren had laughed at her as he told her he was leaving--after he'd drugged her and used her to cheat on his fiance.

There was a leaded glass sidelight on either side of the door. No light was on, in the house or on the porch, but he could see Eleanor walking over. 

It was Juan. Of course. She took a deep breath and opened the door. She silently held out her hands for her things.

“May I come in?” His expression was solemn, and he didn’t hand her the purse.

What the hell did he want now? Retract the job offer, of course. Tell her off for being…lewd? Stupid? Point out that he could never be with someone like her? Oh, well. She stepped aside and held the door open. She walked toward the dining room and turned on the chandelier over the table. “May I have my purse, please?” She looked and sounded tense and small as she turned toward him. One last look at something—someone—else she’d never have. Her throat closed up.

He took a deep breath and looked at her closely. “Eleanor, you didn’t misread the situation,” he admitted. “I was trying to recruit you, yes, but I’ve never tried to charm someone into working for me before. Not like I did with you tonight. Not ever.”

She nodded her head to indicate she understood but didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

“Could we start over?” His voice was gentle. She shook her head, ‘no.’ She was mortified. 

“Eleanor?” He stepped closer and lifted her chin with his finger. “Please?”

She croaked out, “I’m so embarrassed. I shouldn’t have said—” 

Juan cut off her words with a gentle kiss. When he lifted his head, he smiled at her. “I’m glad you did.” 

She looked at him like she didn’t understand—she didn’t. 

“Damn, Eleanor! You do have a way with words.” She still looked puzzled. "Thinking about what you said, I went hard. Need a cold shower hard." He kissed her again, open-mouthed and deep and carnal, showing her what he meant. He broke away, breathing harder, and said, “A friend of mine has a boat here. Would you like to go sailing with me tomorrow? A real date?”

“You want to go out with me? After I just made myself the biggest fool on the planet?” It sounded like she’d cried a little before he came to the door.

“I do. I want to go out with you.” He stepped back and took her shoulders in his hands. “If those things are still what you want, I’d like to help you get them. Turns out, I want them, too.” Juan smiled, and it was more than a little lustful. “But slowly. You may find out I’m not the prize you think I am.” He was married to his work, missing half a leg, older, jaded, scarred, and scared to love again.

She knew all that and she wanted him anyway. “You’re a prize, alright. Better than a box of Cracker Jacks,” she smiled wryly and dabbed her eyes with the tissue again. “And yes. I would like to go out with you. I’ve never been sailing.”

“I think you’ll like it,” he grinned. “I have a feeling that with you, the journey is going to be just as good as the destination.” And he kissed her again.


End file.
